For gamers, it got even harder to trust the Force. It wasn't just the movie that let down against the hype -- the videogames (which have always been hallowed hallmarks for fans -- Jeremy Conrad wishes his children will be born on the anniversary of each Super Star Wars game release date) were nowhere near as exciting as the old SNES thrillers. Then again, there had been bad Star Wars games before, and the games did pick up with the last batch of Starfighter and Battle of Naboo. So, hope stood that the GBA effort -- itself one of the last before Attack of the Clones games blast in -- could stand with those latter heroes. And yet, Jedi Power Battles on GBA is based on one of the worst of the Episode I canon ... how much has the Dark Side seeped into the handheld effort?
Features
- Three playable characters
- 10 levels
- Power ups and new moves
- Link cable support for two players
- Only for Game Boy Advance
Unfortunately, a lot. Developer HotGen has done for THQ an accurate conversion of a very, VERY, absolutely horrible Star Wars game, and everything that's was wrong -- and to be fair, everything that was right ... which wasn't much -- with the original Jedi Power Battles has made the conversion, with a few new glitches to down the ship. The quality of the port is high (I wouldn't mind seeing HotGen back on GBA for Episode II), but this battle was lost a long, long time ago.
If you've ever played the PlayStation or Dreamcast versions of Jedi Power Battles, you know exactly why the GBA version fails. Light Jedi can't jump. Between the awkward diagonal angle, the wonky collision detection, and the way that these Jedi couldn't land a 2-foot leap on an acre of flatland, that B button becomes your arch-nemesis. The infamous Turbine section is back, again with no indication of where the heck you're supposed to land or why you never land there when you make the attempt. And the makers foolishly left in one of LucasArts' biggest blunders - the falling death, which kills your character if he drops a slight bit farther than would be safe. Sometimes you'll double-jump off a ledge to see if the blind leap goes anywhere or just leads to another chasm, and if you decide to land on the ledge underneath when you see it, the character will die even though he's hardly fallen a foot farther down than the double-jump's height. Darth Maul can leap ten feet off a speeding hoverbike and land ready for battle in the movie, but here, the good Jedi would get themselves killed if they fell off a desk?
That's probably the most constantly frustrating part of the game, if just because the acrobatic leaps were so second-nature in the old SNES games. But there are other problems with the Jedi Power Battles series. The isometric angle leads to a lot more problems than it needs to - it's pretty sad to see a Jedi Master battle blade-to-blade with the Dark Lord of the Sith, then fall to his death when nobody's looking because he can't navigate diagonals very easily. The problem seems to be a bit worse on GBA because the D-Pad doesn't handle diagonals well, but it should have been up to the original team to fix this - the conversion just follows a bad plan. Also, the animation of the game gets in its own way - the characters lunges forward when they slash (often right over an edge) and stall in mid-jump if you try to do an attack in mid-air, again leading to a lost life (yeay, more chasm death!)
Underneath it all, however, was the makings of a really great game, and the GBA effort at least shows the good side of the game with some stellar production values. Deflecting back laser fire, slicing through droids, and getting assaulted by an army of Tuskan Raiders is always a blast -- any stage that doesn't have a lot of jumps or chasms has the game running just like I wanted from the beginning. Visually, it's often dark -- sometimes it looks like a floating lightsaber battling white robots in space -- but it's all sharp and detailed. The animation is terrific, with detailed characters all around (although I do miss the rolling droids and the princess is a little fugly), plus some HUGE enemies are thrown in. HotGen didn't do a lot with the GBA's special effects pallet, but they did come up with some nice tricks of their own (dozens of enemies can fill the screen, and slashed bots stay when they're killed; lasers reflect and pop on the walls; lightsabers and other light sources glow). The game retains most of the stages of the game, including one of the STAP stages for some simple side-scrolling shooter variety, and the AI is basically the same level as the original - not brilliant, but engaging (plus, I like when the droids are stupid - watching them blast each other is fun!) One of the Jedi characters is missing in the port (the dreadlock guy nobody liked), but a special hidden character (who's a little unwieldy to control, but can do wicked damage) makes up for his loss.
Also of mention, something of mention in EVERY Star Wars game, is the audio. Yet again, John Williams' score comes across in dazzling detail and the memorable sound samples of laser fire and lightsabers slashing come through perfectly (how do they make EVERY Star Wars game sound so good?) Technically, it's not groundbreaking for the little handheld -- it's all looping samples instead of MIDI orchestration, listening through headphones is a surprisingly disappointing experience with the tinny low-res samples, and it's not in stereo (the last GBC effort Star Wars effort really dazzled me, so this was a bummer.) But that's besides the point - the audio is tuned to perfection for the GBA's small speakers and the sound really rings when it's pumped through the normal system.